


Anthropology

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Episode: s07e25 Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager), Pre-Canon, a smidge of Picard canon, flangst, romantic happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27624572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: Love is a gift. For Chakotay, that gift has never been simple.
Relationships: Chakotay/B'Elanna Torres, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway (transitory), Chakotay/Seska (transitory), Chakotay/Seven of Nine (transitory)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 21
Collections: XOs for the XOs





	Anthropology

You’re not contrary. 

That’s a label your father assigns you — “the contrary one” — and your small chest burns with fury. Your father believes in Spirits and destiny and signs and symbols. 

You believe in anthropology. Studying other peoples makes your own less special. Primitive, agricultural, industrial, and knowledge-based development — every culture follows the pattern. It’s orderly and gives you comfort.

But Starfleet weaponizes your knowledge, turning your familiarity with peoples into tactical advantages. You stand in front of academy classes parroting tales of great tacticians, trying to reinforce that the best battle is the one avoided. 

Anthropology is the science of humanity.

Somewhere along the line, you lost yours. 

The treaty is wrong. You know that. But you tell your father to have faith in the Federation, that the colonies are too tactically important to cast aside and there has to be something else in the works. 

You’re lecturing on Khālid ibn al-Wālid — his vastly outnumbered army succeeding in a daring escape — adding cultural references to help cadets understand why the tactic of faux strength in lesser numbers was successful in the context of Byzantine and Arab belief systems … when a pale-faced lieutenant hurries in and hands you a padd. 

Your father is dead.

Curious faces swim before you. Your shoulder blades hit the wall of the classroom and you want to keep staggering back, back, back. 

_ I was contrary, Father. I was. But not anymore.  _

The next morning, you turn in your badge. 

You go home to a place that was never home before, not even in your earliest memory, and you demand the tattoo, the mark of your people. 

Now, no one can look at you and not know. No one can pretend you’re something you’re not. 

Not even you. 

It takes time to earn the Maquis’ trust. They think you’re a Federation spy — a suspicion you’ll have a sense of humor about only later when you discover your own ship was rife with double agents. 

But you get the ship, rustle up a crew. You like B’Elanna. She has fire in her belly, the way you do.

“Why do you care about this?” you ask her one night in the medbay, Cardassian blood seeped into soft bends of skin around your fingernails, your legs aching from sprinting after the raid. 

She shrugs. “The Federation abandoned those worlds. Do you know what it feels like to be abandoned?”

You do and you don’t. But Seska rushes in before you can say anything and B’Elanna turns away, her hands bloodstained like yours. 

Seska asks about your childhood, your hopes and dreams. Her fingers knead your shoulders and you can put your burdens down, just for a moment, just while your shoulders are loose and this woman tries to understand you. 

You don’t understand you. 

But you fall in love and you can’t — you need to fight, to burn with anger, not smile at hazy imaginings of Seska, her belly large with your child, or Seska, her hair lit by the sun of a far-off world, smiling face turned to you as she reaches for the buttons on your shirt.

She asks to see your medicine bundle, for you to show her her animal guide like you did for B’Elanna, and you say no. No to everything. No to being together. 

“Are you crazy?” Her eyes narrow. “The Maquis will be victorious someday and if you’re not with me, you’ll be alone. Is that what you want?”

You want to study anthropology, to understand cultures and peoples.

But you bury yourself in tactical plans for the next battle. 

Then you’re in the Delta Quadrant, a Starfleet uniform reflected back at you in the mirror. You’re in Aaron Cavit’s quarters — your quarters — and you find a photograph. A man you never met has his arm around a partner who may not know to grieve him. 

Who would grieve you? Your sister? Is that enough?

You need to stop readying for the next battle and start readying for a better life.

Kathryn doesn’t ask you to teach her how to find her animal guide. But something about the way she looks at you makes you think she’s curious to get to know you better. 

Maybe if you open up first, she’ll follow. 

She doesn’t tell you, but you hear she has a fiancé. You back off, keep your distance, try to be respectful. You catch B’Elanna’s stare a few times and wonder if your friendship with her could become something deeper. 

You want something deeper. You want to share the life you’ve come to enjoy far from your people.

You love your people.

But were you ever truly one of them?

Kathryn tells you that she trusts you, that you belong by her side, that captain-first officer dinners are more than official business to her.

You think you’re nearly there. 

For years, you think you’re nearly there. 

But Kathryn is already in love — with stars and power and a quest toward a planet that your people once called home but not anymore. 

You like her better when she doesn’t know who she is, her memories wiped and her eyes soft.

The tactician in you returns, cuts your losses, and moves on. B’Elanna knows, you can tell, but you won’t talk with her about it. You need to stop confiding in B’Elanna when you’re scared or grieving. She’s married to Tom and it’s not appropriate for you to need her the way you do. 

You find out about Seven’s holo-program. The doors hiss closed behind you and you observe the you that she made for herself. 

You could be that man. 

You could be happy cooking and making music and talking over candlelight about things that have nothing to do with deflector capacity or deuterium supply. 

The first time you kiss her, you know. This is the woman you’re going to marry. 

And you do, six months after _Voyager_ gets home. The two of you cook and make music and talk about anthropology. She knows about thousands of cultures, scores of peoples and their development. 

You teach again, assigning textbooks you and Seven write together. 

You’re the man she made for herself. 

She’s the woman of your dreams — shared interests, open and curious, not afraid to speak her mind. 

But she’s gone for days at a time. 

Weeks at a time. 

Months at a time. 

She comes home, Fenris Rangers jacket on her back, all love-flushed cheeks and a smile that isn’t for you. 

Your hands hold hers, and she breathes, “Her name is Bjayzl. I’m so sorry, Chakotay.”

Your chest burns with fury.

_ I’m not contrary, Father.  _

“Fine,” you say. “Go. But don’t come back.”

A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, there’s a knock at your door. 

B’Elanna has an infant in her arms, a little girl by her side. Miral’s fingers wrap around her brother’s tiny foot. 

“Do you know,” B’Elanna says, “what it feels like to be abandoned?”

You do.

It’s sunrise by the time B’Elanna can get the children to sleep and she tells you about her _mok'tah_ , her bad match, with a man who was more interested in fantasy worlds on the holodeck than his own family. 

You tell her how you tried to be a holodeck fantasy for someone else. 

You’re not sure where the laughter ends and the tears begin.

But you invite her to stay for as long as she likes. 

Weeks become months. B’Elanna takes a job testing engine prototypes at a lab on campus. You find yourself reading bedtime stories to Miral and cheering for little Jules’ first steps. After the children go to sleep, there is tea and conversation.

One night, B’Elanna tells you about her animal guide. 

“It was a deer, can you believe it?” Her grip tightens on her teacup. “A timid animal, all big, brown eyes and skittish legs.”

You blink in recognition. 

So many times, you wanted more from B’Elanna and were too afraid to ask. 

Maybe she was afraid, too. 

“I’ve always felt protective toward deer.” You force yourself to look up from your tea. “Maybe it’s because a deer is my animal guide, too.”

That night, B’Elanna doesn’t sleep in the guest room.

You’ve spent so much of your life trying to understand people. Now you know what’s equally important — to understand one person. 

She tells you how embarrassed she was when the Bothan learned of her feelings for you. 

You tell her how frightened you were when she was hurting herself in the holodeck. 

Her arms slide around you and you hold each other. 

“What a lot of time wasted,” she says. 

You think about the pattern that cultures follow on every planet — primitive, agricultural, industrial, and knowledge-based. 

Seska used you, a primitive manipulation. 

Kathryn, perhaps unwittingly, led you to a fallow period, the agricultural time of rest, during which you settled into an identity away from the regret that pushed you to the Maquis.

You collaborated well with Seven, both industrious in your work. 

But knowing B’Elanna, truly _knowing_ her, and your confidence that she knows you, too — that’s the final step in the pattern. 

And your animal guides walk together.

“The time wasn’t wasted,” you say. “My father believed in Spirits and destiny and signs and symbols. I believe in anthropology. I think both of those belief systems point to the two of us finally being ready for each other — and to spending the rest of our lives together.”

And you’re right. 


End file.
